


nothing lasts forever (and why it's okay)

by jinyoungstuan



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Slow Burn, and when i say it's slow it's Slow, mostly they all are just dumb and don't know how to communicate, well that's a new tag for me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 16:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13103994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinyoungstuan/pseuds/jinyoungstuan
Summary: In which everything starts to change when Jinyoung is seventeen - and while he doesn't mind some changes, Mark Tuan just doesn't make it easier.





	nothing lasts forever (and why it's okay)

**Author's Note:**

> [vietnamese](https://parkoflibra.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/trans-ficmarkjin-nothing-last-forever/) translation by ParkEunRim
> 
> \---
> 
> "i want a very fake deep 20k slow build markjin bullshit right before christmas" said no one ever, and i, ofc, couldn't resist.  
> highkey inspired by a very weird concoction of flora cash's 'you're somebody else', f(x) 'ending page' and confession song lmao
> 
> warning: two episodes of explicit christmas tree decorating while having no idea how to do it (i myself had to google what tinsel is, ffs)

Here’s a small fact Jinyoung happened to realize when he was seventeen: everyone changes.

Friends drift apart, couples get into arguments and break up; people separate because of dumbest reasons in the world, sometimes there’s _no reason at all_. Everything in this entire universe is doomed to change, to poof into thin air, obtain another shape, become specks of energy or just cease existing.

It’s not like Jinyoung didn’t know it before he was seventeen – the concept of changes, both literal and figurative, wasn’t suddenly disclosed to him as the biggest secret when someone decided he was old enough. He knew what changes are, remotely, because he never really thought about it before. It was as if he was trying to touch those changes through a curtain, to feel the shape of them blindfolded – that’s how vague it was.

It was just that he was a teen, it was _that_ age when people suddenly become extremely aware of their surroundings, their entire existence – and how fragile and prone to changes it is.

Sometimes, usually very late at night, all alone in his room with no one to bother him, Jinyoung thought about it. About how everything around him was preprogrammed to not remain the same, about how he _himself_ was coded to change, shapeshift and eventually become a dust. He knew that everything has an expiration date, a certain limit after which something is never the same, and yet he wasn’t sure when those expiration dates are due for him. Three minutes later? Three months later? After another twenty years?

He has no idea. How would he – it would be unrealistic to expect to know.

Jinyoung’s first encounter with real changes happens when he’s seventeen. And eighteen, and nineteen. And when he’s twenty. And somehow it always involves the same people, the same people are always changing in his life; it feels like witnessing someone constantly dying and being reborn again, figuratively speaking.

But if we’re speaking figuratively, the pain is supposed to be figurative too, right?

Wrong.

Pain isn’t figurative. It’s just pain, it has to be real; and to Jinyoung, even though he knows that some changes are supposed to hurt, it feels a little too real. Even if by the age of twenty-one he should’ve been already used to it.

Do something for long enough and eventually it will become a habit – even if that habit is losing your friends one by one and getting your heart broken.

 

Jinyoung meets Mark when he’s seventeen.

Mark’s a transfer in Jaebum’s class, _that new boy from America_. Contrary to the first impression, Mark is never too shy to let out some snarky comment or joke around with people he’s comfortable with – but Jinyoung doesn’t know that yet.

When they meet up on the first day of school, all three of them, Jaebum, it seems, has already earned that title of a person Mark is comfortable with – and they all silently suspect it’s because their homeroom teacher dumped the newcomer to be taken care of and showed around by his classmates, and Jaebum felt his inner mother hen instinct calling. Despite his good wishes though, he doesn’t have enough time to work as a tour guide because he has a dance practice, so they make a decent bargain – half of the time Mark will spend with Jaebum, and when the latter needs to leave Jinyoung will take over. Everyone wins.

They all thought so, but realization is a long process and it most definitely doesn’t happen this early.

“Hey, I’m Jinyoung.” Jinyoung introduces himself with a nonchalant nod while munching on a sandwich he grabbed from the kitchen on his way out of home. He doesn’t live far from school, ten minutes by feet – fifteen tops, if he feels like waiting for Youngjae, who’s always late – contrary to Jaebum, who needs at least an hour to commute. 

For a while Mark doesn’t respond and Jinyoung feels a little strange, the bite of the sandwich getting stuck in his throat. A lot of thoughts fly through his mind that moment – maybe the new guy doesn’t speak Korean, maybe he for whatever reason is uncomfortable around Jinyoung, or perhaps there are other circumstances he isn’t aware of.

Jaebum doesn’t seem to notice this awkward pause, he’s busy typing something with his phone and tells, “I need to go, see you both later, have fun. Mark, remind me to bring you my algebra notes tomorrow, teacher Hong told you need to catch up with what you missed.”

So that’s the name, Mark. Jaebum never mentioned it when he called Jinyoung, probably he simply forgot. The name lingers in Jinyoung’s mind, tasting foreign on his lips, no matter how many times he repeats it in his mind.

Mark.

_Okay, he definitely can remember this one._

Only when Jaebum is almost gone, turning around one more time to wave at them and look at both of the guys awkwardly standing side by side, and when Jinyoung gets paranoid that during this 5 minute long encounter Mark already managed to start disliking him, the latter finally speaks up.

“Hi.” It’s said in slow and unsure Korean and sounds the same as it does when you’re paired for a class project with someone you don’t really know. “I’m Mark. You’re Jinyoung.”

“I know.” Jinyoung blurts out, sounding a little bit more humorously than he originally intends. For a while he gets worried that Mark won’t understand it’s a joke, nothing serious, but then the guy lets out a sheepish smile.

“Yeah, you probably should know that.” There’s something about this response that makes Jinyoung unsure if it’s a joke too, something very lame and unfunny to the point he starts smiling too.

Then Jinyoung for the first time realizes that Mark might not be the person he looks like from the first glance. Maybe Mark is just too shy around strangers.

His conviction turns out to be exactly the case, with Jinyoung having to break through the layers of Mark Tuan to finally earn the label Jaebum seemed to be enjoying since day one, people Mark is comfortable with. It doesn’t take a day, not even week or two – it takes the whole spring semester and a little bit of summer, aimlessly spent playing football together in the stadium and lying on the grass in their backyards.

Looking back at it though, Jinyoung can’t answer himself one question.

Why do people find it fascinating to break through each other’s layers? Why is it so attractive, to make a person be completely honest with you, when you’re not sure if that honesty is something you want to hear?

But then Jinyoung comes to a conclusion that there’s no way to figure it out beforehand; there’s no way to know why someone decides to peel the onion, figuratively speaking – nobody can tell whether it’s because of the onion itself, or it’s just because they’re simply into peeling onions, into the idea of that they _can_ do so.

Jinyoung is afraid that the right answer will turn out to be the second one, so he tries not to think about it much nowadays, and anyway, let’s go back to when he was seventeen and Mark was eighteen.

The first time Jinyoung actually realizes that something‘s not the same anymore, it‘s a warm autumn day months later; the autumn semester has just started, and there‘s a few weeks left till Jinyoung‘s eighteenth birthday.

They all are lying down in the schoolyard with their backpacks instead of pillows and uniform jackets instead of blankets, enjoying what could be the last warm rays of sunshine. And by _them_ , Jinyoung means a bunch of friends that over the year got comprised of very different people hanging out and suddenly realizing they fit so well, it’s ridiculous to think they’re less than soulmates.

Jaebum, Mark and Jinyoung are the veterans – they‘ve been together from the beginning, until Jinyoung decided that Youngjae needs someone to practice football with and Yugyeom needed someone to keep him sane with all the energy he has. Jackson hopped into the friendship bandwagon when Youngjae accidentally kicked a ball a little too hard and smashed one of the windows of Wangs. Bambam joined them the latest, when the summer was approaching its end – mostly because he needed a Korean tutor and Jaebum was more than happy to get some extra cash, and unexpectedly took a liking to the Thai boy.

Most of them are from different grades, weirdly coupled – Mark and Jaebum being seniors, Jackson and Jinyoung in 11th grade, Yugyeom and Bambam being the same age too, even if the latter has the older part of being fifteen as of now.

Only Youngjae is left without a friend of the same age, what Jinyoung sometimes feels sorry about – Youngjae is like a link, the middle ground between the hyungs and the rest of them, the mediator when both of groups explode into arguments.

They don’t think about it this moment, however, they’re spending their well-deserved lunch break with Yugyeom trying to take a nap while Youngjae is attempting to secretly take out a sharpie to give him a permanent mustache. Jaebum is cursing at a game on his phone he’s losing; Jinyoung is gathering the last bits of determination not to kill Bambam on the spot, because the guy is shamelessly stealing food from his backpack, when he notices Jackson and Mark lying next to each other and gushing about something in Chinese.

“Stop talking in a language we don’t know, how do we know you’re not talking shit about us?” Youngjae lazily tells them, but the two guys only laugh at it.

“You don’t.” Jackson says, grinning. “Maybe we are.”

Jinyoung doesn’t know why exactly, but he drops his friendly exchange with Bambam about how he will break the younger’s kneecaps the next time he sees Bambam’s fingers near the snacks he brings to school, and just keeps staring at his two friends, who continue their Chinese chitchat.

He must’ve been staring for a while if Jaebum finally raises his head from his phone and tells, thankfully, not loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Stare long enough and you’ll set the grass on fire.”

Jinyoung doesn’t reply to this; he’s busy watching how Jackson and Mark are now playing tic tac toe, black pens stupidly leaving traces on Jackson’s palm, because they’re too lazy to search for a paper.

The rest of the day passes by in a blur to him. He doesn’t know why he just can’t concentrate on anything, even on things his friends are telling him. And eventually Jackson stops trying before the classes even end, getting fed up with Jinyoung either not answering him, or his answers not matching the questions at all.

“You look like you have fever, honey, are you okay?” His mom asks when he finally returns home. Jinyoung doesn’t know – maybe it’s truly a cold because he keeps shivering the entire day, or maybe it’s his school lunch that tasted off earlier.

“I’m fine, mom.”

That’s the default answer, but Jinyoung spends the entire evening and night in his bed tossing back and forth, feeling like his head is about to explode from pain. And yet, no matter how many times he rolls around or how many times he sighs, Jinyoung still doesn’t know why the image of Mark talking with Jackson puts him off this much. It’s not like he hasn’t seen it before; they all are best friends, for god’s sake. But it all doesn’t sit well with him so much, Jinyoung eventually throws up.

Okay, maybe he is a little dramatic, he doesn’t throw up because of overthinking – in the end, it’s really only a bad case of flu that keeps him in bed for a few weeks, swearing that he’s about to die.

He returns to school two and a half weeks after the said lunch break and everything seems normal – he talks to Mark and Jackson as per usual, not holding back on sulky reminders that none of his so-called best friends visited him sick, keeping in touch mostly through texts. However, he has to give it to them, Jaebum and Mark are preparing for their college entrance exams and Youngjae can’t risk catching a flu just before the tryouts for their school’s football team.

Everything seems fine up until Jinyoung’s birthday, when he unexpectedly realizes he finally reached one of the expiration dates he has been thinking about.

They skip a few classes that day, Jinyoung’s birthday is deemed to be _that_ occasion which justifies skipping biology, physics and chemistry, which Yugyeom is failing anyway. The bunch of friends gather in their usual meeting place – a quiet spot in a park behind school; it’s quite uphill, so no one ever bothers them there, it’s a perfect place for them to wild out as much as they want.

Jinyoung has warned them before that he doesn’t expect any presents or anything, but the boys still decide that one turns eighteen only once so they can gather some money and spend it on a book about literature Jinyoung has been infatuated with.

Bambam even takes a cupcake out of his jacket pocket, slightly crushed and with a candle stuck into it in a way not so aesthetic and stable. Jackson starts rambling about who the fuck keeps food in their pockets, only for the Thai kid to fire back that it was the only place where he had space in, and that Jinyoung doesn’t need to _eat_ it, he’s only supposed to blow out the candle.

They light the candle and sing Jinyoung happy birthday with their mismatched voices and several changed lyrics, but he can’t bring himself to make fun of them, and instead focuses on trying not to smile like the happiest idiot in the world.

Only when Mark opens his backpack and takes out a few bottles of beer, being the only legal adult not according to the lunar calendar with which Jaebum always tries to justify himself adding two years to his actual age, everything starts slowly go south.

Actually, not even slowly – it just hits Jinyoung in the face like an avalanche of snow, making him freeze inside.

They’re talking about something irrelevant, Jinyoung doesn’t even remember about what exactly, when Mark takes a glimpse at his phone and starts cursing like a veteran truck driver.

“What is it?” Yugyeom asks, sipping on his beer. Jinyoung only raised his eyebrows when Mark nonchalantly handed bottles to Yugyeom and Bambam too, but Jaebum just shrugged saying it’s only beer; and anyway, it’s better when they drink being supervised by them, not behind their backs with a questionable company.

“We apparently were supposed to have a surprise biology test today and that fucker Yang failed me because I was absent. I have a big fat F now and it’s _not_ the time to get one.”

“Doesn’t make sense.” Jaebum says, leaning against a tree. “She can’t fail you only for absence, unless…”

“Yeah, unless someone ratted out that I ditched the class on purpose again and she got fed up with that.” Mark curses again. “I can’t believe this fucking bitch would fail me, for fuck’s sake, I was the only one doing all the fucking extra credit work this semester, _what a fucker_.”

Jinyoung only laughs at the curses flowing out of his friend’s mouth – Mark always likes to pretend he doesn’t care about his grades and doesn’t give a flying fuck about exams, but these small breakdowns always show them the truth. However, instead of saying something else, Jinyoung asks only, “Kiss your mom with a mouth like that?”

And maybe Youngjae is a little too tipsy thanks to that half a bottle of beer he drank, or he’s just not thinking what he’s saying, laughing at Jinyoung’s comment and loudly announcing, “I don’t know about his mom, but he sure does kiss Jackson hyung with it.”

There’s an abrupt silence that washes over them, making them drop everything they’ve been doing up until now. Everyone, especially Jinyoung, is sitting on the grass frozen; Mark looks shocked that they got outed and Jackson keeps staring at the ground, slightly blushing and mumbling, “Shut up, Youngjae.”

“Well but he _does_ , that time when I caught you kissing after classes.” Youngjae loudly exclaims, satisfied with himself.

“Shut up, Youngjae.” This time it’s Jinyoung who says that, while Bambam attacks the couple with questions about how and since when, and about who confessed first and why the fuck no one ever told them about this.

For a while it seems like Mark glances at Jinyoung, his stare somehow apologetic, but it either lasts only for a second or it’s just Jinyoung’s mind playing tricks on him.

Everything starts feeling weird for some reason, seeing others congratulating Mark and Jackson like them becoming a couple is a fucking feat; something just _doesn’t feel right_ , and Jinyoung’s not twelve anymore – he knows it’s not because the attention was drawn away from his celebration.

So he excuses himself, saying he needs to find a place to pee, because the beer didn’t make wonders for his bladder.

Nobody notices how he takes his backpack with him; they notice it only when in the end Jinyoung doesn’t return. He doesn’t return for a week because he finally realizes what has changed.

He fell in love. And it scares him, it scares the living shit out of him.

 

Eventually, Jinyoung returns back to normal, even though it’s a little hard to look at Mark, and he’s a little too bitter to look at Jackson.

His friends are mad, undoubtedly – he hasn’t been answering his phone for that whole week and only a threat to call his mom coming from Jaebum makes him reply to all the messages, saying that he’s alive and well, just needs some time alone.

Midlife crisis, he jokes when the bunch of friends finally knocks it off, because they missed him too much to be mad for a long time. Bambam notes that it would be a midlife crisis only if he’s planning to be dead before reaching his twenty-seventh year, _which won’t happen thank you very much_ ; but he can’t predict future and Jinyoung doesn’t know what a true crisis is yet.

It doesn’t take long for him to realize what a true crisis is, though – and when it happens, he’s eighteen.

It starts off only as an idea, a very sweet utopia of seven friends who don’t want to separate. Jaebum and Mark are planning to move to dormitories of their respective universities – after a murderous day of taking college entrance exams and countless panic episodes, where they’d yell about how nobody understands that they failed everything and they’re going to be homeless for the rest of their lives, Mark made it into applied math department of Yonsei, thus becoming a celebrity in their school; Jaebum chose to devote his chaotic life to photography and easily scored a place in Konkuk.

Nobody is talking about it explicitly, but they know things aren’t going to be the same once they start attending lectures, the rest of the crew being stuck in school; and they genuinely loathe it, even though they can’t do anything about it.

It’s a little (read: very) out of the blue when Youngjae one weekend, just a few days till their early winter break, tells, “When my grandparents died a few years ago, they… Kind of… Left me their apartment.”

An awkward silence follows, no one knows what to say.

They’re at Jaebum’s place, a small living room clearly not big enough to house seven hyperactive young guys – Jaebum is getting his ass shamelessly beaten in a video game by Bambam, Jinyoung is lying on the carpet playing with Jaebum’s cat, Jackson and Mark are being gross together on sofa, so nobody pays any attention to them, except Yugyeom, who’s trying to sneak some photos for blackmailing later. Six pairs of eyes turn to Youngjae, and the latter stubbornly keeps staring into the void in front of himself, suddenly embarrassed.

Jinyoung doesn’t know what to say without sounding tactless – he knows Youngjae a little longer than the rest of them, he was there for him during that harsh period of his life, so he doesn’t want to possibly poke at an old wound. But Youngjae speaks up first.

“I mean… We don’t use it, and I don’t think my parents would mind, since the place is technically mine and our own house is pretty packed with two other kids. Jaebum hyung and Mark hyung need a place to live as well, so…”

“Where are you going with this?” Jackson asks, throwing his arm around Mark’s shoulder. Jinyoung notices it with the corner of his eye, finally leaving the cat alone, and even though he feels a pang in his heart, he manages to swallow the pain down.

He’s getting better at it, he’d like to believe. Before, he used to feel like he’s about to throw up whenever he ends up in the same space with them, or like he’s been punched straight into his face. Now it only hurts somewhere on the left side of his chest, so he’s definitely getting better at it.

“We could all move there, make it our own dorm or whatever.” Youngjae shrugs and continues shoving potato chips into his mouth like he would be discussing weather.

“My mom would beat my ass before I even ask her about that.” Yugyeom sighs first, shaking his head. “It would be awesome though, imagine how much fun it would be.”

Jaebum, turning off the video game utterly embarrassed by the score of 45:2, nods. “It’s very kind of you, but more than half of you are like, twelve,” Bambam tries to correct him that he’s fifteen, but he doesn’t listen. “ _As I said,_ half of you are twelve, none of your parents would let you, and personally, I have no money to pay you rent. At this point I’m just hoping to get a spare corner in the basement of our university dorm, or else I’m stuck with having to spend three hours in subway going back and forth every day.”

Mark hummed, agreeing with his words, and Jinyoung, even though fascinated by the idea, still unaware of what responsibilities fall on one’s shoulders living separately from parents, has to agree that this plan has a lot of holes in it.

Only Jackson, giving it a second of thought, shrugs. “I’m in, though. My parents probably wouldn’t really care and besides, we don’t have to live there permanently, kids stay with their parents, people who can, stay in the flat. I think we all will be free to reunite, when…” he quickly counts, “When Mark and Jaebum will be seniors in university, so that’s four years from now.” He bites his lip, because that’s not how he imagined things going. “But I mean, we can just organize week long sleepovers?”

A long discussion ensues, with them getting excited and even taking a sheet of paper, already planning what furniture they’re going to buy and how they’re going to share the rooms, but the reality is much more complex. Even though Youngjae swears he won’t take any rent from them, they’ll just need to split bills for electricity, water and other stuff, there are just way too many problems with this idea.

First, just like Jaebum predicted, Yugyeom and Bambam’s families immediately oppose this “nonsense talk” as soon as it’s brought up, telling that they’re only fifteen and they’ll sit their asses at home if they don’t want to be disowned.

It might not be the exact quote, Bambam is prone to exaggerating, but the point is clear – both of the families think that there’s no point in doing a thing so drastic when they all are going to be in Seoul anyway, it’s not like Mark and Jaebum are moving to other cities or countries.

But according to Yugyeom, _they just don’t get it_ – they’re best friends, they’d run after each other to another side of the world; _it’s seven or never, for god’s sake_ , but that doesn’t impress his mom at all.

And the second problem is that those, who manage to get a permission to embark this adventure (Mark, Jaebum, Jinyoung and Youngjae, namely, because Jackson’s parents do mind, apparently), mostly because nobody thinks they’re serious and will come back home after approximately three days, don’t have enough money to pay the upcoming bills, let alone to make this old place suitable for living. They have only their small allowances that aren’t anywhere near a fortune, and Mark and Jaebum’s upcoming scholarships. _It just wouldn’t be enough._

Those are the main problems, but are they serious enough to be an obstacle? Not exactly.

The last winter break before new school year and Mark and Jaebum’s first semester in university is spent working – almost all of them somehow find part-time jobs, in order to manage their finances if they’re serious about making this plan work. A lot has to be done – even though it has four rooms, the apartment is still a place that’s been uninhabited for the past four years or so.

So almost all of their small salaries go towards the flat – Jinyoung’s first pay from a local coffee shop goes towards new wallpapers, which are unevenly put up by Mark and Yugyeom; Jaebum’s money, marked with paper cuts he always gets working in a post office, are used to fix the bathroom so that they could at least take a shower there.

Even though the place is still far from suitable to be staying there by the end of December, Youngjae’s savings for a new phone are spent on a Christmas tree, so that they could spend the holidays in their very fragile home. To test out how it feels to be living together, he says and his smile is so wide and warm that Jackson somehow doesn’t mind to work an extra shift in a grocery shop to pay for a table, so they would at least have where to put the food during Christmas Eve.

Jackson isn’t good at constructing things; or perhaps, a more accurate description would be that he’s not good at making them _last_ ; so that evening Jinyoung tries his best to put the food, made by Mark and Bambam’s united cooking skills with a dash of Jaebum guiding them through the art of not setting the kitchen on fire, on the table as carefully as possible, in case it really breaks; but it’s done not without some sort of pride warming up his heart.

Sure, everything is far from being perfect – they still have no other furniture, having to sit on the floor now, and most of their salaries got delayed this month because no one really cares about part-timers, and there’s still a ton of things they need to do before the first ones of them move in.

But they’re happy nevertheless – it’s a mess, but they still have each other, and they feel like they don’t need anything else at the moment.

“We forgot to decorate the Christmas tree.” Youngjae suddenly remembers when their stomachs are more or less full. He sounds like they committed a crime, so Mark laughs at his nagging, but still gets his ass up, knowing the pestering won’t stop. Jinyoung excitedly follows, but there’s only the two of them, since Youngjae immediately turns his back on them and says he’ll join later.

They have to search for the tree though, because during their weekly cleanup Youngjae put it in one of the boxes their flat is full of, and they have a blast searching for that artificial green problem among all the stuff before finding out that Jackson for some reason decided to put it (or throw, nobody knows – it’s way too high for any of them to reach) on the very top of an old wardrobe in one of the rooms – the only piece of furniture that was left after Youngjae’s grandparents died.

“I thought we won’t need it soon!” Jackson yells from the kitchen as a response to Jinyoung’s curses, which “ruin a holy night” as Bambam notes. Yugyeom tells him to shut up, because he’s not even Christian.

“Sure, you thought a Christmas tree won’t be needed for Christmas, noted.” Mark yells back to him, making everyone in the living room laugh. Then he turns to Jinyoung, who’s standing next to him, contemplating what to do. “Any ideas?”

Honestly, Jinyoung doesn’t feel extra comfortable being alone with Mark. The older guy always gives a weird impression that he knows, or at least is slightly aware of Jinyoung’s big fat crush on him, no matter how the latter tries not to show how he dies a little every time he sees Jackson kissing him.

But Jinyoung is learning how to live with the hindrance of his feelings – they’re best friends after all, and he doesn’t want to lose two of them. It’s a no brainer that Jackson wouldn’t take the news very welcomingly, either.

So he only sighs before saying, “Nope. We don’t even have any chairs to get onto, and I for sure am not risking my spine using the table.”

It’s met with a smile as Mark is sharing the same sentiment, not wanting to break a bone or two on Christmas Eve, so after a few seconds of contemplation he decides, “I could just lift you a little, you should be able to reach it.”

At first Jinyoung refuses, because _hell no_ , he’s not about to witness how Mark breaks his back while trying to lift him; besides, his heart suddenly skips a beat so bad, he feels dizzy thinking about physical contact with Mark. But Jaebum is already yelling to ask what the fuck they’re doing there for so long, so he takes a deep breath and nods, feeling his guts threatening to return all the noodles back.

It feels weird to see Mark bending a little to search for a better grab on Jinyoung’s legs, but at the same time it’s incredibly stupid and funny, so Jinyoung unconsciously smiles, even though his stomach makes a flip when his feet leave the floor. He can’t tell why exactly though – whether it’s because he’s suddenly half a meter taller than usual, or because of the fact that _Mark is holding him_.

Mark tries not to laugh as well, since they’re not holding their balance well to begin with, and it’s done in a blink of an eye – Jinyoung quickly finds the Christmas tree package on the wardrobe and with a swift movement of his arm makes it fall onto the ground; Mark lands him on the floor not so gracefully either, because his arms can’t handle this anymore.

Jackson comes to check if there’s someone dead; the sound of the Christmas tree falling sounded dangerous, he says.

There’s nothing weird in the room, only Jinyoung taking the damn box to bring it to the living room, and Mark sitting on the floor completely out of breath, but from the way Jackson’s eyes glare a little, Jinyoung gets an idea that it’s not the sound of a falling box that made Jackson concerned. But the latter soon smiles at them and Jinyoung breathes out with ease.

“I thought you guys won’t return anymore.” Youngjae complains, putting down a glass of wine. Or more like a cup of wine, because they don’t have glasses.

“First of all, put that wine down, because you’re a child.” Jinyoung says. “Second, someone get your ass here and assemble this thing, I have no idea how it works.”

Bambam and Yugyeom don’t bother, promising they’re going to help decorating the tree once it’s, well, a tree, not a bunch of artificial branches. Mark can’t bring himself to care, still a little out of breath; Jaebum and Jackson don’t understand all the complicated instructions either, trying to put two pieces together and watching how they’re falling apart a second later.

“Move, amateurs.” Youngjae scoffs, cheeks red from the said wine, and Jaebum gives him a look telling that if even _Im Jaebum_ couldn’t do it, nobody can.

Youngjae gets it done in precisely eight minutes and Jaebum pretends he didn’t see thing.

Decorating the Christmas tree goes like everything in their lives – in a chaotic manner, with a lot of unnecessary shouting and most of them getting bored after fifteen minutes. In the end, it’s mostly Jaebum who feels like a child again and Bambam, trying to convince everyone to use 7-eleven cupcakes as decorations, to what everyone with at least a drop of sanity opposes.

“Jaebum would secretly sneak out to eat them during the night, so no.” Mark scoffs, coming back from one of the rooms with one last box of Christmas tree toys and reaching it out to Jinyoung, who’s now laughing at the guy in question, who, obviously offended, says they can finish the job themselves.

(Actually, Jaebum is more pissed off about the fact that tinsel doesn’t stay on the tree at the exact angle he wants, but nobody needs to know that.)

So that’s how Mark and Jinyoung are the last men standing, with Mark following Jinyoung around with the box of toys, while the latter is searching for places to put them. It’s done pretty fast, and Jinyoung, taking one last glimpse at the box, sees something on the bottom of it.

It’s a small figurine of a bird, not quite suitable for the occasion, but Mark only shrugs at it, as if knowing what Jinyoung is thinking. “We don’t really have a star for the top of the tree, so I guess a bird will have to do.” He says. Jinyoung offers him the honor, but Mark shakes his head. “Just put it on there and let’s finish.”

The end result doesn’t look half as bad as it could’ve been with their decorating skills, but they don’t dwell on it for too long, since Jackson announces, “It’s a few minutes after midnight guys, merry Christmas.”

Everyone looks around a little confused – they didn’t notice how they spent two whole hours fighting about decorations. Jinyoung gets a whole lot more confused when Mark tosses the empty box away and hugs him, warmly wishing him merry Christmas. Other guys do the same, but only Mark’s hug makes Jinyoung stay awake for the rest of the night, even when the rest of them pass out in their sleeping bags and airbeds just before four o’clock.

It’s the first time he truly feels jealous of Jackson, so, so jealous, his own emotions scare him. It almost feels like Jinyoung could confess to Mark on purpose, just to get rid of that bugging feeling of anger and jealousy, but he only rolls on the other side and tries to drown his thoughts.

Jaebum’s snoring is like godsend for occasions like this.

The New Year celebration and those few months till new school year pass by in a blur – most of them are working their asses off to get as much money as possible for the flat, but days keep going by and Jinyoung still feels the hug on his skin as some sort of a comforting blanket, even if it hurts at the same time.

He’s only eighteen, he gets unreasonable sometimes and gets hurt easily, and totally doesn’t know what to do with the overflow of emotions he feels every time Mark looks at his direction; Jinyoung has no idea how he’ll live having to see Mark every day once they finally move in together, but it’s too late to back out.

But only on the last day of February, when all seven of them lie down on the floor in the living room again, because their secondhand beds are supposed to arrive only tomorrow due to mixed up orders, Jinyoung starts to feel afraid; he starts to feel like he finally knows what kind of life crisis he was talking about a few months ago.

Maybe it’s the realization slowly sinking in, the real weight of their decision finally hitting Jinyoung right in the face, that makes him feel petrified after realizing that he needs to make a grocery list for tomorrow; perhaps it’s that squeaky annoying voice in the back of his head saying that maybe they rushed too much, when Jinyoung can’t remember whether Yugyeom and Bambam set their alarm clocks so they wouldn’t get late to school, so he has to get up and set another one of his just in case.

It just _hits_ him. He’s going to turn nineteen this year – he’s an adult, sort of, at least legally. It doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing though, none of them do.

Is he afraid of senior year in high school while trying to make it compatible with working part-time? Not really, he knows he’s able to pull it off. Living away from his parents, basically being one of the parents to their youngests, who are now carelessly sleeping, having their true parents’ permissions for a sleepover as the last gift before school starts? A little – Jaebum and Mark are just as uneasy about the same thing, it’s obvious they are; they’re unusually silent that evening.

Jackson is also silent, going to sleep without telling a word, and maybe _that’s_ what scares Jinyoung the most. Not Jackson’s silence per se – just the fact that he doesn’t talk to Mark for some reason and the fact that Jinyoung is _enjoying_ it.

Jinyoung greets the first morning of his senior year in high school thinking that he’s a terrible person and a shitty friend.

 

They don’t have a lot of rules set once they start living together, just the most basic ones: take turns in taking out trash, clean after yourself, no loud music after midnight on school days, no parties, the usual stuff. The unsaid rules are also clear to everyone without even having to talk about it – no lovers, no hookups in the flat, and they’re all pretty good at sticking to it.

The lingering peace of four guys living together and other three more than occasionally staying over seems a little unnatural even to them, but it’s possible due to constant work to avoid each other’s sharp edges and learning to make compromises. Like the one not to talk with Jaebum either before midday, or at least before he has his three cups of coffee, so it wouldn’t turn into a bloody fight.

(Mark takes it upon himself to test this one. One Saturday after Jaebum’s first photography assignment for which he didn’t sleep for whole two days, Mark strode into his room at 8 AM and asked if Jaebum can borrow him a hair dryer, because his stopped working. The said hair dryer almost hit his face.)

If time was passing by in a blur earlier, now it feels like someone would’ve put it into a rocket and launched it into space, together with their struggles to keep themselves going with all the responsibilities. Jinyoung and Jackson feel extra pressure because their college entrance exams are just around the corner without them even fully realizing it, so it’s not a huge surprise that the bunch of friends see each other a little less, especially the ones that don’t live together.

So Jinyoung thinks his question is innocent and caring when one late autumn evening, feeling like he did his best at cramming history in the living room, he turns to Mark, who’s sighing over his math assignments, and asks, “How’s Jackson these days? It’s been ages since I’ve last seen him.”

At first, Mark doesn’t hear the question, impatiently tapping something into his calculator, but it seems like the final answer doesn’t satisfy him, so he only sighs, abruptly lifting his head from books and mumbling a confused “Huh?”

“Jackson. Your boyfriend, my best friend. All that.”

There’s no bitterness when Jinyoung says these words. It’s been a while since he last thought about it, totally convinced that he’s a shit of a person for even having feelings for Mark, so all this time Jinyoung has been focusing on getting over his crush – but it’s just too hard.

He knows, he knows very well that a happy ending is not reachable in this story. Mark is his best friend, dating another one of his best friends. Even if they broke up for some reason, Jinyoung still wouldn’t have the courage to make a move.

And yet he couldn’t help it, couldn’t help thinking how it would feel if Mark’s smile would light up on his face from Jinyoung’s texts, not Jackson’s; how those lazy Saturday afternoons would feel if Mark cuddled on the living room couch not with his boyfriend, but with Jinyoung.

But he knows it’s impossible, so all he can do is to try numb himself, to try not to feel anything – and Jinyoung thinks he’s good at it, he’s almost content with how empty his heart feels and the way things are now.

Or so he thinks, until Mark’s smile, usually bright whenever he talks about Jackson, doesn’t appear on his face at all. “You’re classmates.” He says, avoiding the question.

“Yeah, but I haven’t seen him in school for the past few days, so I got curious. He doesn’t seem very eager to answer my messages, either.”

Mark sighs once again, and this time the sound of it is heavier than the sigh about his complicated homework. “I also haven’t seen him in days.”

Jinyoung tries not to show his surprise, but the attempt isn’t really successful.

Sure, when it comes to people with personalities so vastly different like Mark and Jackson’s, the group of friends has witnessed countless of fights; fights to the point where it seemed like they’re going to rip each other apart at the very least, or will dump each other right here right now. But they haven’t fought in a long while, so this fact about Mark not even knowing where Jackson is, is _alarming_ to say the least.

“Is everything okay between you two?” Jinyoung carefully asks treading on eggshells, unsure whether it’s okay to ask this and how much Mark is eager to share.

They’re home alone that evening – Jaebum is working on yet another assignment for his composition class and Youngjae is in football practice, now the captain of their school team – and maybe that’s one of the reasons Mark feels that it’s okay if he says this. He knows that no matter what words he’ll tell, they will stay between him, Jinyoung and these four walls with wallpapers which are about to fall off, because they didn’t exactly do a great job putting them up.

“I think there’s a problem between us.” Mark finally says, unwillingly, as if afraid that if he tells it out loud, his fears will become true.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve changed a lot during these years.” Mark mumbles, picking on a corner of his math book. Jinyoung only looks at him, sitting across the couch and unsure whether to continue or not. “And sometimes… I’m not sure if it’s working out. But at the same time, it’s been a long while – if we managed to survive this long, maybe it’s all in my head, maybe I’m just seeing things? Does this make any sense, because it doesn’t in my head, at all?” He doesn’t notice how he starts rambling.

It does make sense; it makes a lot of sense.

It’s hard, probably even impossible to stay the same person you were years ago, time changes things too much. You drop some habits and pick up new ones, your personality is shaped in various ways throughout those years and nothing ever stays the same, even if it doesn’t sit well with others. Heck, Jinyoung sometimes feels like he’s not the same person he was yesterday – and undoubtedly, in way, he really isn’t – so Mark’s concerns about people changing and something not working out anymore are more than normal.

That’s what Jinyoung tells him, even though _that_ feeling makes its return in his heart, the one that hasn’t bothered him in a while. The one that pulls and pokes at his heart when he sees Mark struggling – the remnants of his feelings.

Or are those really only remnants, not the whole deal that’s been suppressed for so long and inevitably one day will flood through all the walls Jinyoung has built around himself? Jinyoung doesn’t know, he doesn’t see the difference and it doesn’t even matter now.

Mark is having a hard time, _that’s_ what matters.

“In the end,” Jinyoung sighs in conclusion. “The only way is to talk to him, don’t leave it hanging. Bottling shit up never helped any relationship.”

Ironically, his advice is the same one he himself is avoiding like the plague. It’s a little funny when Jinyoung thinks about it – sitting and comforting his crush about his potentially crumbling relationship, when he probably should be bitterly enjoying the situation.

But Jinyoung never knew how to be a bad guy, he genuinely feels bad for Mark and Jackson without any hidden meanings, even if he knows that his side of the story will never be listened to.

Okay, he would be lying if he put it that way – his story was heard in one way or another. Jaebum knows, as Jinyoung one night was so fed up with his feelings that he spilled it to the first friend he saw, Yugyeom knows too, so it’s obvious that Bambam knows as well. They never shoo Jinyoung away when it looks like he’s about to have a breakdown about all this mess, but their answer is always the same – and even if Jinyoung knows it’s the only right answer, he doesn’t want to agree with it.

Talking it out with both Mark and Jackson is not an option. Losing two best friends over a few unnecessary feelings and potentially breaking up a couple? No thanks.

“I don’t think we’re bottling something up.” Mark slowly says. “It feels like Jackson is feeling the same for a while now. I might not talk a lot, but I’m not dumb, I see things.”

Jinyoung suddenly wants to sarcastically ask does he really, but refrains.

Things are messed up enough, if Mark’s evaluation of events and facts is accurate and unbiased by his anxiousness. But Jinyoung doesn’t know what else to add – he’s a nineteen old with no idea how relationships work, he’s never been in one. Other than his advice about communicating more, the only thing he can offer is to wait.

Time heals some things, if that people say is true.

But he’s not aware of one very important thing yet – while time does heal some things, it makes others rust and decay. Ask Jackson, he eventually learns all about it.

Mark doesn’t talk to Jackson, but somehow it turns to be temporarily okay – Jackson seems much more relaxed when college entrance exams are finally over, and the rest of December is dedicated to being especially lovey dovey with Mark while planning his moving in, because Jackson has finally gotten his parents’ blessing to get his ass out for college.

However, this period of peace doesn’t last long, and unfortunately, Jinyoung is somehow always alone with them whenever they fight – Jaebum’s never home because he’s meeting some girl from music department, stubbornly denying they’re dating; Youngjae is either at school or football practices, so Jinyoung always becomes the middle ground for a war that has his its battles occurring more and more often.

He doesn’t understand more than half of those fights though – when Jackson and Mark fight, they always do it in Chinese, and Jinyoung hasn’t spoken his broken Chinese ever since that last grade of middle school, when he took it as his third language. Maybe they do it because it’s more convenient than shuffling through their minds in search for a Korean or English word, or maybe it’s just because they’re both faster at coming up with new insults for each other that way.

That one evening though, when Jinyoung is in his room, trying to drown their yelling in the living room by making a mental list of what he needs to do at his part-time job tomorrow, he understands one word and it makes his heart freeze.

_Zhenrong._

Jinyoung hasn’t heard his name being said in Chinese for ages, maybe ever since that last Chinese class he had, or maybe since when Mark was teasing him months ago, saying something in Chinese and refusing to translate; but the way Jackson quickly drowns it under another pile of words ties his insides into a knot.

How on earth did _he_ make it into their argument?

Amidst the initial panic about being somehow guilty for their argument, Jinyoung tries to reason with himself, knowing his name could’ve popped up in numerous contexts, he might’ve just misheard something, and in the end, Jackson still forces out a fake smile at him, coming to say bye before running into a snowstorm outside.

Jinyoung never asks what was it about, but he has a terrifying idea that whatever Mark and Jackson have left out of their relationship probably won’t last much longer. Bambam seems to be sharing the same sentiment, after letting Jackson crash at his place for the night, because the latter doesn’t want to return home, sending Jinyoung a gloomy text about how this family is being torn apart without him and Yugyeom moving in yet.

They’re not exactly right, for better or for worse, nobody can tell – Jackson and Mark make up and everything’s somehow okay until the end of Jinyoung and Jackson’s first semester in university.

Up until then, everything goes incredibly smoothly for the seven of friends, too smoothly for it to be true or to last long – Jackson finally moves in, sharing the room with Mark, Bambam and Yugyeom’s parents finally get convinced their kids are grown up enough to spend weeks without returning home with a condition of daily calls to parents to assure them they’re alive; the flat eventually becomes full, with seven permanent residents and them all having to share rooms anyway. Jaebum gets funding for his art project that most probably will be exhibited in one of the more prestigious art galleries in Seoul, and Jinyoung…

For the first time in a long while, it seems like he really, truly gets over his feelings for Mark. He feels genuinely happy seeing him and Jackson being gross with each other during breakfast, because that’s the only time they all meet in the kitchen without any excuses, his smiles are not forced when they jokingly plan their wedding.

And also there’s this one guy in Jinyoung’s comparative linguistics class, Kim Wonpil, who’s really nice and awkwardly flirty every time they bump into each other before or after the lecture.

It takes two months for Wonpil to finally muster up the courage to ask Jinyoung out, and the latter, even though not exactly surprised at this point – honestly, even a person as oblivious as him could’ve seen it coming – gladly accepts the offer to grab some coffee after classes with an obvious hint that it’s not simply a coursemates’ thing.

It finally feels like this is it, Mark is gone from his heart as someone Jinyoung once had romantic feelings for, for that moment he’s just a friend, a best friend and a flatmate, nothing less and nothing more; but as soon as Jinyoung catches himself thinking about this in the middle of Wonpil’s story about his cousin during their first date, the coffee he’s sipping on gets cold and bitter.

In reality, Mark isn’t gone anywhere – he’s always stuck somewhere in the back of Jinyoung’s head, ready to crawl out whenever Jinyoung feels like he’s ready to feel attraction to someone else. And he tries to ignore it, ignore the fact that every time someone does something, anything, his slew of thoughts goes by the same pattern – _Mark does this too, Mark has talked about it a few days ago, Mark this, Mark that, Mark—_

Jinyoung grabs Wonpil’s hand that’s resting on the table of the coffee shop as if it’s able to shoo away the name echoing in his head. Wonpil, even though a little surprised by this gesture, only smiles.

Later, he drags Jinyoung all the way across the city to Banpo bridge to see the rainbow fountain, water colored with various lights; and Jinyoung, sitting in swings just a few meters from the dark water of Han river waiting for the light show to start, remembers that it’s a place where a lot of couples go on dates around this time of the year.

He turns to say some sassy comment about this to Wonpil, but when he turns, their eyes meet and Jinyoung can see evening lights glimmering in Wonpil’s eyes, sparkling in yet still unfamiliar, but calm manner, and Jinyoung lets out a smile.

Maybe they can make this work.

The calmness is long gone once Jinyoung returns to the flat just before midnight – it’s eerily quiet, quiet in a way it’s never been on a Friday night. There’s no one playing music, no one gaming in the living room. It’s not even clear how many of them are home.

He flinches after turning on the light in the living room, because there’s Mark, sitting in complete darkness for quite a while, it seems, judging from the way he squints at the light that’s burning his eyes. Jinyoung’s heart drops a little, because his eyes are red again, but he doesn’t know how to ask.

“You’re back already.” Mark awkwardly mumbles, probably trying not so subtly draw the attention away from his less than okay appearance.

“Yeah.” Jinyoung trails off. “Where’s everyone?”

Mark smiles, or at least tries to, but it feels like his lip corners are made from wood, not wanting to curve upwards at all. “Bambam, Yugyeom and Youngjae are at some school party or something, Jaebum is with his girlfriend, and…”

“And Jackson?” Jinyoung slowly asks, not having a good feeling about this.

“He moved out earlier this evening. We decided to take a break and he said he doesn’t be around for a while.” Mark’s voice shakes a little in the end.

“I’m sorry.”

There’s nothing else Jinyoung can think of saying. He feels stupid not knowing what to say – broken up or not, they’re still his best friends. But what else do you say to a person whom you’ve loved for the past two years?

Mark doesn’t mind this lack of elaboration, if anything, he feels relieved that Jinyoung doesn’t ask the details, so he offers another smile. This one is a lot more natural, even if it does require a lot of effort. “How was your date?” He suddenly asks with the same smile on his lips and Jinyoung’s heart makes a somersault.

“How did you—“

“Youngjae might’ve let it slip out his mouth earlier.” Mark says. “I should be offended that I wasn’t informed about it though, I’m your best friend too.”

Jinyoung swallows. “We don’t need to talk about it now.”

“Then when?” Mark still keeps his smile. “Don’t worry about me, I’m able to handle the news. Who’s the lucky one?”

“He’s my coursemate.” Jinyoung slowly says, for some reason wishing the floor to open and swallow him alive, so he wouldn’t need to have this conversation.

“How did it go?” Mark seems weirdly into this, the idea of Jinyoung dating someone. Or maybe into the idea of hearing about someone having a better love life on the day he got dumped.

Jinyoung doesn’t really know what to say. “It was… good.”

“Will there be a second one?”

They agreed to go watch a movie next week, so Jinyoung assumes there will be. However, he only nods his head before turning to go to his (or now his and Jaebum’s, since the flat’s so packed) room, so that he could avoid this weird and awkward encounter.

“Jinyoung.” The latter turns around to see Mark looking like he’s thinking about something very hard, his eyebrows are furrowed, but all he says is, “I’m happy for you.”

Jinyoung is nineteen when he understands that people saying they’re happy for him can make him feel sad. It takes a whole lot more time to understand that when someone says they’re happy for you, they’re not necessarily saying the truth.

 

They all would like to pretend that Mark and Jackson’s breakup doesn’t leave a dent in their friendship – and yet it’s way too obvious to deny.

It’s not obvious in a way where there would be some kind of groups forming inside their friend circle with people picking sides – you need to know the backstory to pick one, and neither Jackson nor Mark tell what happened.

It’s another kind obvious – where Jackson always drops by for a visit when Mark’s not home, or where Bambam and Youngjae seem to unconsciously avoid Jackson for the first two weeks. It’s obvious in the way Jaebum feels uncomfortable seeing Mark spacing out whenever the topic shifts to anything remotely related to Jackson; in the way Mark, when cornered, always address Jackson as “him”, but never says anything bad.

There‘s an obvious strain put on their friendship, but they‘re too stubborn to admit it, because somewhere deep inside their hearts they‘re still kids. With the same insecurities they had years ago, the same urge to be heard. It‘s like an unchanging law of nature – all people change, but in some aspects remain the same, the same coding carved into their genes. The same thoughts, same needs, same aspirations.

Same lies they tell without even realizing.

It‘s two days before Jinyoung‘s 20th birthday, when Wonpil loudly wonders whether they’d be better off as friends. And to Jinyoung’s biggest surprise, instead of feeling heartbroken, hurt or at least pissed off about having his birthday mood ruined, he feels… happy.  He was planning to force himself to talk about their relationship after his birthday, but Wonpil always was perceptive, for what Jinyoung is thankful.

It’s not like he didn’t love Wonpil, or not like he didn’t _like_ him – he did, really. Wonpil is a good guy, soft, incredibly optimistic and warm; and maybe that warmth is what’s suffocating Jinyoung. He’s never liked excessive warmth, even as a kid he was never able to fall asleep if it was too warm in a room. So Wonpil’s offer to break up feels like a freezing gust of air and Jinyoung welcomes it.

He spends his birthday on the floor of their living room with a cheap ass cake Yugyeom grabbed on his way from school with his closest friends except Jackson – the latter congratulated him earlier with a short text message. It’s obvious why he doesn’t want to join them, and Jinyoung, even though tired, doesn’t find it in himself to get disappointed.

Time doesn’t care about breakups and broken hearts though – it’s a powerful force, making days blur into one unreadable picture of college deadlines and work schedules, missed birthdays of their friends and other forgotten things.

There’s quite a few people Jinyoung dates after Wonpil, but none of them stay for too long; that half a year stays as his longest relationship and sometimes it makes him both free and uneasy at the same time. On the one hand, he feels happy that he doesn’t manage to truly get attached to people before they break up, on the other hand, Jinyoung sometimes wonders is there something wrong with him, with the people he’s dating. _Why can’t they stay?_

Some of them do stay – as friends, work colleagues, college buddies; others disappear from his life like they’ve never been there, as if they lived only in Jinyoung’s imagination.

One thing stays as well – and it’s the fact that Mark, surprisingly, is always there for him when Jinyoung returns home from yet another break up. It’s weird, as if Mark _knows_ when Jinyoung is about to run away from yet another relationship; or maybe it’s not really – he knows Jinyoung for almost four years now, eventually you start seeing a pattern even if you don’t want to.

The pattern of him diving into feelings head first without any precautions. It’s almost like a game, to see whether he survives the dive. Some get a kick out of doing dumb shit like gambling, playing video games or watching questionable porn – Jinyoung gets a kick out of relationships.

Not that he desperately tries to find a person to date, but he never says no to new opportunities, either. Jaebum has his own opinion about this, but it’s always delivered in a nonverbal way, through stares and pursed lips whenever he sees yet another name near Jinyoung’s in the latter’s Facebook updates.

But eventually, Jinyoung’s enthusiasm eventually fizzles out. He becomes distant, starts ignoring calls or doesn’t give a shit about being treated this way too, and then he just ends it.

He’s never too sad about it, by the end of a relationship he’s so unapologetically unattached that it becomes a chore to him – take out the trash, buy a carton of milk, go handle a break up. Or send a text, that way you don’t even need to get out of bed.

Sounds shitty, but by the time Jinyoung doesn’t see anything bad in it.

However, that particular evening, when Jaebum is out with his girlfriend for the night again, Youngjae is in a football camp for the weekend and the rest of the kids decide to spent more time with their families, and Jinyoung returns home only to be left with Mark all alone, he doesn’t refuse a glass of white wine the guy offers him.

The slightly too sweet for his taste liquid is burning Jinyoung’s throat with its aftertaste and he suddenly smiles, remembering how Mark always declares that red wine is a little too pretentious for a mess of twenty-somethings, that’s why he always buys white one.

“What’s the occasion though?” Jinyoung asks, sitting on the floor of the kitchen and playing with the cork of the bottle, rolling it back and forth, while Mark is sitting on the table, eyes following Jinyoung’s movements. It seemed like Mark already had the bottle opened and half empty even before Jinyoung got home.

“None.” Mark shrugs. “Just felt like it.”

“Not a good habit.” Jinyoung notes, but still finishes his glass, so he’s not the one to judge. Besides it’s Friday anyway and he remembers that Mark had a tragically difficult and important test for one of the classes earlier today, studying until 4 or 5 AM for the past week. He definitely needs to let off some steam.

Mark’s words surprise him a little. They’re totally off topic, poking at all the right places for Jinyoung, reminding him the very reason why _he_ is sitting on kitchen floor feeling completely exhausted and emptying the same bottle. “How was it this time?”

Jinyoung doesn’t try to pretending to be stupid, he doesn’t ask what Mark is talking about, he knows. This entire time he’s been honest with Mark, well, at least about the most crucial things, so he only shrugs, reaching for his glass. “Like all the other times. A little sad, a little messy. She cried.”

“Must’ve been hurt. Everyone said you matched well.” Mark notes, pouring another glass for himself too and finishing the bottle.

Jinyoung notices the detachment in that sentence, he didn’t spend two years in linguistics department not to notice that Mark himself never shows what he thinks about Jinyoung’s relationships. It’s always “they say” or “everyone tells”, but never “I think”. It’s interesting, but he doesn’t give it much thought – Mark’s a foreigner after all, it’s just the way he talks.

“You can match all you want, if it doesn’t work out, it just doesn’t.” Jinyoung concludes, feeling tired and a little tipsy from two glasses of wine quickly downed on an empty stomach. Maybe it’s the fact that he trusts Mark not to take it deep into his heart, or maybe it’s already the alcohol and frustration speaking, but his words sound borderline mocking. “You and Jackson also matched pretty well, but it didn’t make you last.”

From the way he puts his glass on the table, the contents of the glass spilling a little, it seems like Mark doesn’t live up to Jinyoung’s expectations of not taking it personally. His and Jackson’s mess is still a wound. It’s been almost a year, and yet it still hurts.

Jackson was Mark’s first and so far the last relationship in Korea. It’s not a surprise that it pains him, Mark always gets too attached; ever since he was eighteen he knew nothing else but to love Jackson Wang. And when it abruptly got over that one winter day, it felt like he had to learn a lot of things anew.

Basically, Mark had to relearn how to live in a world without Jackson, if you may, no matter how cheesy it sounds. When you spend two years loving a person, it’s hard to suddenly tell yourself to stop. Maybe that’s where the biggest difference between Mark and Jinyoung lies when it comes to their relationships – Mark is always still too attached and caring in situations Jinyoung is too fed up to feel so.

“That’s a whole different story.” Mark mumbles instead of a direct answer, not comfortable with the fact that this conversation suddenly became about him.

“Then what’s the story?” Jinyoung asks. He’s a little too brave, he knows – none of them have ever explicitly asked about this, and Mark could simply tell him to fuck off, because it’s personal and they don’t have to know everything about each other. But he doesn’t.

“Our views on some things were too different to tolerate each other.”

Jinyoung scoffs. “Sure. It’s always personality differences, isn’t it? Like celebrities always break up because of busy schedules. I get it, usually no one ever wants to shit on their ex, but the reality is much more complex than busy schedules and personalities.”

Mark thinks about it for a while. What Jinyoung says is probably true and he doesn’t want to argue, because Jinyoung always was better at words than he will ever be; but Mark isn’t lying this time either. “No, really. We… Didn’t agree on one very important topic.”

Jinyoung is not even remotely convinced. “And what’s the topic?”

“Your feelings for me.”

Jinyoung freezes for a second. He was trying not to think about it for the past year, like he was trying not to think about that time when he heard Jackson yelling his name, and Jinyoung is pretty good at it – especially after Jackson moved out and never returned, he managed to convince himself with it. He had nothing to do with that breakup, it was his mantra. And yet, apparently…

Suddenly, Mark starts laughing at his perplexed face, making his best friend even more confused. “I’m joking, relax. Jackson kept telling me about how he’s not sure if long term relationships are for him and eventually he dumped me.”

“Fucking asshole.” Jinyoung says through his teeth, but his words are not directed to Jackson. It’s dedicated to Mark, and the latter knows – Jinyoung sees how the realization dawns on Mark’s face, informing him that he crossed a line.

Jinyoung is aware that Mark knows, or at least has an idea about the crush Jinyoung has had for him for years – it was probably hard not to notice. Jinyoung thought he got better at hiding it, even though the same weird squeaky noise in the back of mind always poked him, telling that all of his relationships ending like this might be only his subconscious trying to fight off any attempt at feelings towards someone else than Mark Tuan. But the fact that Mark probably knows it, doesn’t give him the right to rub it right into Jinyoung’s face.

“But I—“ Mark tries to say something, something that probably wouldn’t have helped the situation at all, but Jinyoung doesn’t listen anymore, standing up and shutting himself in his room.

“Fuck off.” That’s all Mark hears.

Jinyoung wishes he’d truly mean it.

The next morning comes with a slight headache thanks to the wine and an almost sleepless night, with Jinyoung getting out of bed only before midday. He doesn’t want to leave his room though, not sure whether he’s still alone with Mark after their yesterday’s fiasco, but he’s pretty starving and in a desperate need of shower.

When he peeks his head out of his room to look around, the way to the kitchen seems clear, however, he still flinches in surprise, when he sees Youngjae already back home from his football camp, with a cup of tea and trying to finish a pile of homework in the kitchen.

“Who ran a truck over you?” Youngjae jokes, words accompanied by his signature laugh, which echoes throughout the entire flat. But today it sounds a little off, it’s a lot more unnatural and jarring – an obvious sign he’s stressed out.

Next semester he’s going to be a senior in high school, with college entrance exams coming way too soon, and yet Youngjae feels like he has no idea what to do with his life. Sure, he’s okay at playing football, but it always was more of a hobby; he’s not bad at languages, and yet he doesn’t know if he wants to major in one. He hates anything business related, and yet it’s a field that pays.

Combine this with a whole lot of other personal problems, and you’ll get a very stressed eighteen year old, running only on energy drinks and three hours of a sleep a day, trying to keep his balance on a brink of madness.

Jinyoung notices it, and after stealing a sip from Youngjae’s cup and frowning – seriously who mixes an energy drink with _tea_? – sits down in front of him like a parent, ready to give a pep talk. “What’s up?”

At first, Youngjae tries to avoid it, telling him that nothing’s wrong and he’s just tired, but he’s always worn his heart on his sleeve; scratch that, his heart is a huge loudspeaker, which is blasting everything he’s ever felt to everyone who cared enough to listen. All Jinyoung needs to do is to pull the imaginary string and Youngjae’s worries untangle right in front of him.

Worries about how he plays football worse and worse this season, feeling like he doesn’t deserve the team captain title; about how his grades are tragic and he will definitely fail his last tests this semester; about how he has no damn clue what he’s doing with his life, and Jinyoung thinks he stepped in right on time or Youngjae eventually would’ve exploded.

“You all have it so easy now.” Youngjae tells, looking somewhere just behind Jinyoung, as if he’d be embarrassed by his outburst.

“What do you mean?”

Youngjae sighs. “You have the majors you picked, you already have a path in life – everything’s already decided, you all just need to prevent yourselves from fucking up. And people in high school, they’re thrown into this shitty void where no one ever explains anything. For years they keep you tied down with all the rules and everything done for you already, to the point they dictate how and where to write our names on a paper. But now suddenly they’re like, tutorial is over, welcome to the real game, and honestly, not only it feels like I’ll lose that game, I sometimes think I skipped years of that tutorial, because I have no idea how to do _anything_.”

Jinyoung smiles a little. He can relate, he thought the exact same when he was about to go to college, envious that Mark and Jaebum already had gone through that period.

“We don’t have it easier. Everyone, me, Jackson, Jaebum, literally everyone went through the same shit of not knowing anything about real life. I still don’t know anything about it, I doubt any of us do, we just kind of stick with the flow and wing it as much as possible. Answers don’t come immediately after you get accepted into college, an acceptance letter isn’t a secret instruction on how to deal with what’s ahead of us. I’m sure we all will feel the same again before graduation.”

Youngjae knows. He knows all that, but that doesn’t mean it gets easier and less stressful.

“When you graduate from high school, it really might feel like you’re forced to play some idiotic game,” Jinyoung continues, feeling like he’s truly becoming an adult a little too early. “Like you have to press play and play through levels with varying level of shit, but actually, there’s a way around it.”

“What way?”

“Pause the game, unplug the console and throw it out of the window, because we all got rigged copies.” Jinyoung laughs, and Youngjae looks at him torn between disappointment and amusement. “Don’t stress too much about it, it’s inevitable, and besides, you have us, the best and the messiest team to guide you through.”

Youngjae still doesn’t feel calm, he’s heard too many frightening stories about people who fucked up their lives by not making it to college or choosing a wrong one – lately, it’s the ice breaker of every teacher of his, as well as the “next year you all won’t be so relaxed” story; but he’s thankful for the attempt nevertheless.

So instead of continuing the topic, Youngjae says, “I heard about you and your girlfriend. I’m sorry.”

Jinyoung only shakes his head, feeling like by now probably everyone knows he broke up with someone yet again. “You know what they say, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.”

“Are you comparing her to a frog, because that’s not very nice?” Youngjae laughs again, and this time it seems a lot more natural. “Anyway, hyung, sometimes you don’t need to wander off to other ponds to search for your prince, just saying.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Jinyoung asks, raiding their fridge and shamelessly stealing Jaebum’s sandwich. It’s been there for the past two days and it’s nearing the expiration date, so Jinyoung consoles himself that he’s saving Jaebum from a food poisoning.

Youngjae seems to be into euphemisms that morning, it seems, as he tells, “You can’t hide two things in this life.”

Jinyoung only raises his eyebrow while munching on the sandwich. They might have a point saying that stolen food tastes better. “And what are those?”

“Sneezing.” Youngjae laughs and Jinyoung is about to roll his eyes, but before he manages to do that, the younger guy adds, “And love.”

“I fail to see a point.” Jinyoung tells with his mouth full.

“It’s because you’re stupid.” Youngjae sighs, returning to his homework.

“I was a valedictorian and my GPA right now—“

Youngjae, however, is completely unimpressed. “Book smart and street smart are two different things. While you probably could write me an analysis of some novel worth a 4.0 and a scholarship by the end of this evening, you suck at feelings. It’s okay though, don’t beat yourself about this, you can’t learn it from books.”

Jinyoung opens his mouth to argue, but they’re interrupted by a phone call from a local ER telling them an amusing story how Im Jaebum tried to show off his swag to his girlfriend by skipping a few stairs of an escalator going down and broke his leg, so he needs someone to both convince him he’s not about to die and bring his insurance papers.

 

Jaebum truly doesn’t die – he’s only gifted a nice pair of crutches to wobble around, reminding a very uncoordinated kangaroo. That doesn’t stop him from complaining though, whining that at this point he’ll break another leg if Bambam will leave his socks in the corridor again; his girlfriend asks him if he’s ever thought about breaking his jaw, maybe that will shut him up.

Jinyoung likes her – she keeps Jaebum wrapped around her finger in the kindest way possible, and that saves them a lot unnecessary headache. They have plenty of that even without Jaebum’s whining and ordering them around with tasks he could easily do himself.

If before they thought there’s a dent in their friendship, now everyone with a working pair of eyes can see it’s not a dent anymore – more like gaping holes that are growing bigger and bigger with every unsolved argument and unsaid word.

It’s been three months since Mark’s joke and Jinyoung is still not talking to him, trying to convince himself they hate each other now. The air around them seems full of electricity-like tension whenever they are unlucky enough to appear in the same place, which happens more than often. Mark still doesn’t talk to Jackson and it’s been more than a year.

Yugyeom is growing distant too, it’s obvious he is – perhaps he’s a little too fed up with his best friends always giving each other either silent treatment or passive aggressive comments, so he’s often not even home, doing god knows what god knows where, returning either at asscrack of dawn or shutting himself in his room without talking to anyone on the days he’s home on time.

“He’s probably at the library again.” Bambam shrugs one evening, when Jinyoung unconsciously starts talking with himself while doing dishes after Yugyeom doesn’t return for dinner again. “Exams are coming, he just wants to do his best.”

He’s right, Yugyeom’s eighteenth birthday marked the start of their examination period, mock exams this time, so they’d have an idea what to expect during their senior year. Jinyoung feels weirded out by this, because he can’t really say he noticed when their “kids” finally grew up.

But all he rhetorically asks Bambam is, “Can’t he do his best in a way I wouldn’t burst an aneurysm thinking where the fuck he is?”

“Can you all stop making this place a warzone, so that he could study without hearing everyone fighting?” Bambam returns a question not so rhetorically. Jinyoung throws a towel at him, telling that if he’s smart enough to be this sassy, he’s smart enough to finish cleaning the plates. The guy takes the towel, but that doesn’t shut him up. “I mean, seriously. Do you remember when was the last time this flat saw more than three days of peace that wouldn’t be passive aggressive?”

Jinyoung remembers, he truly does. He thinks he does; he _hopes_ he does. “That time, when…” he starts, but his enthusiastic voice trails off.

Bambam doesn’t say anything, but from the way his eyebrows rise, Jinyoung is aware that he might have made a point, not matter how hard they’d want to deny it.

It’s not like Jinyoung is enjoying this state of living – who could be stupid enough to like that awkward buzzing silence whenever you’re left alone with a person who’s been your best friend ever since high school? Or to look forward to everyone finally losing their shit and snapping at each other for seemingly littlest things?

Jinyoung truly doesn’t, but he also has this feeling in his guts, saying that it’s a little too late – their friendships changed too much and got distorted to the point it would be naïve to expect them to genuinely talk everything out.

So instead of trying to reply and prove a point, Jinyoung simply takes out his phone and texts Yugyeom, saying that he should bring his ass home and that there’s some food left for him in the fridge, because Jinyoung has to do a night shift in his part-time job.

However, Yugyeom doesn’t reply that evening, he doesn’t do that the next day either.

“Okay, I’m getting disturbed.” Jaebum says the next evening, after his tenth call goes unanswered and Youngjae announces an emergency meeting, because they’re _in panic_.

“Right about time.” Mark sarcastically mumbles, playing with the hem of his shirt.

“Oh piss off, you weren’t that concerned for the entire day either.”

Jinyoung, running on no sleep thanks to his night shift in mail sorting center and this whole situation, somehow still finds it in himself to try to stop yet another fight that’s about to take place at 9 PM. “Maybe he’s with his family? His mother usually calls me every few days to ask how he’s doing, but now she hasn’t done that in a while, so I thought…”

“Then why on earth doesn’t he answer his phone? We couldn’t have made him so fed up with us to the point he’d decide to ignore us completely, could we?” Jackson wonders, accompanying the question with a laugh, but it’s stiff and scratches against their eardrums like sandpaper.

It’s an achievement though, even if the occasion is a little too frightening – having Mark and Jackson in the same place, breathing the same air and not looking like they want to kill each other. It’s definitely a feat, but even they think their petty fights can wait.

“We really should call his parents.” Mark concludes, looking at Jinyoung who just gave away that he has their contact info.

“Yeah, sure.” Jinyoung responds, not looking at him. “Imagine if someone would call you at this time of the day and say _oh, hi, don’t shit your pants but we think your kid might be missing_.”

“Still better than having this debate club now and doing nothing.”

It’s not fair to say they didn’t do anything – after Bambam said Yugyeom didn’t show up for classes this morning, Youngjae raided the nearest libraries and other places he might’ve been at, while Jaebum and Bambam were trying to contact every possible friend of Yugyeom’s, but all of them told that they haven’t seen the guy in a while, on the verge of losing contact.

They don’t need to do anything, actually – while they’re arguing yet again, the problem solves itself. Yugyeom stumbles back home a little before midnight, making all of them shut up mid-sentence in which Jaebum is swearing that he’ll find a crutch in his wardrobe and stuff it up Jackson’s ass if he doesn’t stop googling what happens with missing people and reading it out loud to use it as an argument to Bambam’s offer to wait till morning.

Yugyeom is sporting a black eye and his lip corner is slightly bleeding, accompanied by bits of dried blood on his eyebrow. He’s slightly limping too, whenever he needs to put weight on his right leg, it distorts his face with pain.

He clearly is a little messed up, because he expects that nobody will be waiting for him, or at least he _hoped_ no one will; but when he’s met by six pair of eyes, stares varying from confusion, to relief, to fear, Yugyeom only smiles, like nothing weird would be going on, and mumbles a quick and backhanded hi, followed by his words about he’s fine and going to sleep.

And then Mark loses it.

It’s rare to see him this mad; all of them think they actually have never seen him like that, when he spits out, “Hi? You’re fine? Is that fucking all you have to say to us after two days?”

“Hyung…” there are two voices blurring into one that moment. First one is Yugyeom’s, who’s looking at the floor and avoiding eye contact, the second belongs to Youngjae, who’s just relieved that their friend is alive.

“Don’t hyung me, you asshole.” Mark stands up, looking like he’s ready to physically fight the youngest, now standing just a few centimeters away from him. Everyone’s so stunned, they don’t stop him. “Where the fuck were you? Why the fuck do you look like you got beaten up?”

Yugyeom doesn’t answer that. “I’m sorry for making you worry.” That’s all he can say, and Mark curses through his teeth once again, feeling how desperately anger is boiling in his veins.

Usually, it's Jaebum’s job to be angry, to yell curses and lecture people about how irresponsible they all are, but he keeps mum this time, looking so, so small when Mark is like this.

“Enough.” Jackson says with a tired voice, standing in between them and pushing Mark away. “He’s here, alive and w— Not really well, but yelling at each other won’t change anything. Just Yugyeom, keep in mind that this kind of behavior isn’t what we’d like to see in the future.” He adds, but Yugyeom doesn’t lift his stare from the living room floor. “Anyway, I think it’s about time for me to hit the road home, it’s late. Goodnight, folks.”

You can see the cracks in Youngjae’s smile when he’s wishing Jackson goodnight, and they all know – three, two years ago, he wouldn’t have walked out of the flat without getting the full story out of Yugyeom’s lips and lecturing him back into sane mind.

But time changes everything – now they’re content with only knowing that the rest of the friends are alive, and this thought doesn’t sit well with Jinyoung, who’s now searching for some rubbing alcohol in the bathroom before going to now only Yugyeom’s room, since Bambam mumbles he’s going to sleep on the living room couch tonight.

“Hyung, don’t…” Yugyeom wants to protest, when he enters the room after a few knocks. However, Jinyoung doesn’t listen to his refusals, gently pushing his shoulders down, so Yugyeom would sit on the bed, while Jinyoung is trying clean the wound on his lip. “Fuck, that hurts.”

“Language.” Jinyoung says absent-mindedly, focused on his task, now carefully moving the cotton pad drenched in rubbing alcohol against Yugyeom’s eyebrow. “You won’t tell us what happened, will you?”

“You don’t need to know. Nothing serious, it’s my business.”

“I basically raised you from when you were in diapers, your business is my business, and I’m sure the rest of the guys feel the same about this.”

Instead of adding something to the topic, Yugyeom sighs, “Mark hyung truly hates me now, doesn’t he?”

Jinyoung thinks about it for a while – it’s hard to decide things when it’s the first time seeing Mark losing his cool like this; but eventually he shakes his head, searching for a bandaid in his pockets. “He doesn’t, he was just scared and worried. We all were.”

“I hope you didn’t call my parents?” suddenly Yugyeom leans back with a little bit of fear in his voice, but breathes out with ease once Jinyoung shakes his head. “It should stay that way.”

“Yugyeom, what’s happening?” Jinyoung asks one last time. “Do you need help? Is there someone bothering you?”

However, Yugyeom, turning away from his friend to change into his pajamas, revealing even more bruises, only gives him a smile in return. “I’m already eighteen, hyung, I can take care of myself. It won’t happen again.”

He’s lying.

He might not mean it, it might not be on purpose, but he’s lying – the next time it happens, Jaebum has to go take him from a police station pretending to be his brother. Jaebum doesn’t explain much to the rest of them, just tells he dropped Yugyeom off at his parents’ place and that it was only a stupid bar fight where police caught Yugyeom with a fake ID, since he’s not nineteen yet. And yet, from the way Jaebum scrunches his face and his delayed answers, Jinyoung knows he’s lying too.

“I see absolutely no reason why I should be lying.” Jaebum defends himself one evening, one month later, when Mark corners him in the kitchen. Jinyoung is there too, making himself an omelet, because there‘s a long night of studying for midterms awaiting. “It was stupid bar fight, that’s all there was to it. He told that the fake ID wasn’t his and they released him with a warning, end of the story, simple as that.”

“Getting involved with police is never simple. It’s not a joke for god’s sake, so stop this bullshit.” Mark says and they all know he has a point. They never really believed that police would let someone go this easily when a forged ID is involved.

“Well you sure know a lot about jokes, don’t you.” Jinyoung doesn’t even notice how a snide comment leaves his lips as he’s raiding the fridge for milk.

Mark doesn’t turn to him, eyes still fixed on Jaebum, when he tells, “That’s not relevant right now.”

Jaebum looks kind of relieved about the topic change, but he’s still a little confused; even though it’s more than obvious that Mark and Jinyoung aren’t on good terms with each other for the past, like, half a year now, no one ever knew the reason. Mostly because they just stubbornly refused to talk about it; or about anything else for that matter.

Jinyoung only snorts, feeling anger pulsating in his head. Maybe it’s the result of the tension that’s been building up for literally months, or perhaps it’s because he takes it as Mark saying that his feelings about that particular evening aren’t relevant. He knows only one thing – he’s fed up with it.

“You know what’s not relevant here?” Jinyoung says, ignoring the smell of burning food coming from his frying pan. “Whatever that happened in the past doesn’t matter anymore. What’s the use of knowing what happened and what’s happening with Yugyeom if all we’re going to do is sitting down in the living room and deciding that oh no, that’s not okay, but it’s fine because he’s still a child, he’ll grow out of fake IDs, bar fights and not coming home for days? There’s absolutely no use, because none of use care. None.”

“You’re wrong about this.” Jaebum tries to reason, feeling slightly offended, because _cares_ – if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be sitting here covering Yugyeom’s ass and the fact that the guy actually was drunk as shit when Jaebum got to the police station; that he dropped Yugyeom off not at his home, but Jaebum’s parents’ place for him to sober up, and paid the fine for public disturbance from his own pocket. But maybe it’s Jaebum’s personal problem – he always trusts others too little, thinking he needs to take care of everything himself.

However, Mark looks at him not really hiding his contempt. “Leave it, Jaebum. Let him think like that. Sure, we don’t care. It’s only you who has feelings and cares about everyone. Our very own saint.”

“It’s not what I meant—“

“What is going on again?” Bambam enters the kitchen with a frown etched in his face and a pencil behind his ear, as he’s trying to do his homework. “What are you burning here and why are you yelling again?”

Jinyoung only then remembers his food, which by is now is a black and uneatable mess, taking it off the stove and throwing it into the sink with the whole frying pan.

“Nothing.” Mark replies. “Just someone can’t get over his huge ego. We’re not kids anymore, Jinyoung.”

“Oh, I wish we would be.” The latter fires back. “Maybe things would actually be different without this much bullshit coming from every one of you.”

“Yeah, in the ideal scenario, everyone would be acting however the fuck you want and planned in that little head of yours.” Mark bitterly laughs.

“No, maybe I would fucking have more brains not to return to school after my eighteenth birthday, so that all of you wouldn’t be a problem now.”

The kitchen goes silent, except for Jinyoung heavy breathing and the leaking sink, making the water tapping seem incredibly loud.

_He doesn’t mean it, he doesn’t mean it, he. doesn’t. mean. it. he—_

Maybe he does mean it at the moment. A little.

Jaebum wordlessly stands up from the table and leaves the kitchen without sparing a glance at any of them. Bambam is looking at Jinyoung stunned – sure, they’ve seen each other angry, mad even, but they’ve never resorted to these kind of words…

“Good to know what you think about all these years of our friendship.” That’s all Mark says before leaving the kitchen as well, and suddenly Jinyoung feels like he doesn’t know how to breathe anymore, so all he thinks of doing at that moment is grabbing his shoes and jacket from the corridor and running outside like he’ll die if he won’t get away from this place as soon as possible.

His phone is ringing in the back pocket of his jeans, but he doesn’t pay attention to it, running down the street – the only thing he can think about is how much he hates Mark Tuan and how stupid and selfish he is, and how stupid Jinyoung was for even thinking that Mark is worth to have a crush on. Jinyoung takes out his phone only when a red light stops him at an intersection, seeing Yugyeom’s name flashing up on the screen, but he declines the call thinking it can wait.

It couldn’t.

Jinyoung returns to the flat the next morning, spending the night outside despite the chilly weather, to take his things, because he decided that at this point it’s better for everyone if he moves out to ease the tension; he thinks everyone is still asleep, as it’s usual for a Saturday morning, but everyone except Yugyeom is in the living room looking like they haven’t slept for the entire night.

Jinyoung doesn’t know what to say to them, so he only silently nods in a greeting of some sorts, fully sensing that they’re not waiting for him, and turns to his and Jaebum’s room to pack, but the latter’s voice stops him mid-step.

“Something happened. I don’t know if you care, after what you said yesterday, but—“

“What?”

Turns out, Yugyeom got involved with a small local gang that’s been dealing weed and they all got caught earlier yesterday. Jinyoung doesn’t even feel how his legs bring him back, making him sit down on the couch next to Youngjae, totally out of words.

Things change after that morning and they’re never the same – they are called to questionings by police, their flat gets searched several times; Yugyeom’s parents give them their own questions, but they never know what to say. By that time they feel so foreign to each other and even to themselves, it’s not a surprise that they haven’t noticed what’s happening with Yugyeom.

It’s terrible, and perhaps unforgivable, to allow a friend sink deeper into a hell hole, knowing something’s not right and still not doing anything about it asides those few naggings, which Yugyeom totally ignored anyway, but that’s the outcome of their deteriorating relationships with each other.

They barely talk with each other anymore after all the events that take place – Jinyoung sticks to his original plan to move out and nobody says goodbye to him, asides Youngjae. But the latter is kind of forced, since he still has to get the keys back, so it doesn’t really count.

The only thing that remains a status quo afterwards is that biting guilt Jinyoung always feels, questioning himself what would’ve happened if he had answered that call, if he had spared a second to talk to Yugyeom that evening. Questioning whether the outcome would’ve been different.

Maybe. He doesn’t know.

Maybe he doesn’t _want_ to know.

 

If seventeen year old Park Jinyoung was like a firework – hot-blooded, unapologetically spontaneous and free to some certain extent – then a twenty-six year old Park Jinyoung is a total, polar opposite.

His personality was softened by various people whom he met throughout the years, whom he liked or disliked, or even both at the same time; all the sharp edges were scrubbed away raw like with sandpaper. Jinyoung felt it, he realized that things have changed once again – he realized that he looks at things way, way too differently now.

Some things just don’t seem to be worth getting all fussy about anymore; he’s gotten better at making compromises and listening to people, he’s become calmer in general, always saying that there are bigger problems in the world than a delayed salary or a few poorly worded thoughts slipping out of someone’s mouth.

He doesn’t know whom to credit it to, or to what. Perhaps it’s everything that happened in his life ever since they decided to become adults a little too early, maybe it’s the experience of really living all alone for the last five years without having nor his parents nor six other guys looking after him.

They all still don’t talk with each other though, even after years that have passed; or maybe it’s the other guys not talking to _him_ , with minor exceptions of Bambam and Youngjae still wishing him happy birthday every year. And over the years Jinyoung gets content even with that, occupying himself with his studies and now paperwork in a company which hired him when he finished his master’s degree in translation.

It’s not a good job, it’s not even an okay one – it has too many overtime hours and sometimes Jinyoung works during weekends, but he never complains. He guesses that it’s a thing of _the_ adult life, the start is always supposed to be shitty. And that evening in mid-December, packing his things after another day full of work, Jinyoung thinks that maybe the change in his personality is not anyone’s achievement or fault – it’s just the natural flow of the events.

When you grow up, you start seeing things differently, you understand them differently and act upon them differently. And it’s okay.

The only thing that doesn’t change no matter how old Jinyoung is, is that heart fluttering when he sees Youngjae’s message in his phone. Jinyoung gets curious though, because it’s not his birthday and usually they don’t contact each other otherwise, but the message doesn’t bring much clarity.

It’s simply Youngjae’s apology about being an ass of a friend, and a plea to return to their old place to gather some things of Youngjae’s. Everyone’s moved out over the years and he is about to as well, but he doesn’t have time due to all the chaos in his life.

Jinyoung doesn’t feel anything when he reads it – he’s too numb to even think about the fact that their flat, their safe space, is empty now, so he simply calls Youngjae to fake-sulk about being texted only when his help is needed. Youngjae hasn’t changed over the time – he still sasses Jinyoung, saying something that has a valid point.

If Jinyoung wants to stay in touch so much, why on earth doesn’t he reach out himself?

Jinyoung doesn’t comment on it, just tells the younger guy that he owes him dinner, which he can return tomorrow, because Jinyoung has a free day, and hangs up.

During all these years, Jinyoung has never thought about visiting the place, even though he can’t deny it holds a lot of great memories. Like the one where they switched sour salt and sugar for Jackson one morning and had to lock themselves in the bathroom for the rest of the morning, because Jackson was very serious about murdering them. Or the one where their neighbors almost called the police when they were playing tag and screeching in corridors in the middle of the night during Jaebum’s 20th birthday.

He never thought about returning there, because he was always afraid of those memories, afraid that he’ll start missing them or thinking about how everything could’ve been different if they communicated with each other more. About how they would’ve noticed when Yugyeom took the wrong path if they weren’t so focused on their own petty dramas. About how everything might’ve been okay if Jinyoung didn’t say _that thing_ back then.

That’s one of the biggest disadvantages of the adulthood, Jinyoung thinks, getting into his car to face the inevitable – it brings regrets. Teens don’t feel many regrets, because they don’t understand a lot things yet, but once they hit you, there’s no way back. You start overthinking every single thing, creating alternate endings and alternate sequences of events for everything that’s bugging you.

Jinyoung finds the key from the flat in its usual place – under the doormat, but turns out that he doesn’t need it; the lock is left unlocked and soon as presses down the handle, the door opens, startling him a little and making him nervous.  

The lights are on inside the flat, and Jinyoung starts wondering if Youngjae accidentally left it like this before leaving to take care of his things. But soon he realizes it’s not the case, there’s someone else inside, in the living room, judging from the sounds of carton boxes being pushed around.

It’s Mark.

He doesn’t look like he changed a lot, at least physically, asides maybe the fact that, thankfully, he looks a little chubbier than Jinyoung remembers him being – the same mop of dark brown hair, same facial features, Jinyoung can even swear Mark is wearing the same sweater he’s seen him wearing countless of times.

His face does look a little more tired though, there’s a slight heaviness to his motions as he’s searching for something in one of the boxes; but soon the heaviness is gone when he gets startled by Jinyoung, who accidentally hits his foot into the living room door, the sound of it echoing throughout the empty, wiped out of any furniture again, place.

“You scared me.” Mark says and Jinyoung can’t decide what to make of it, especially when he has no idea what the older guy is doing here.

“Sorry.”

Those are the first words Jinyoung tells him in approximately five years. They should mean a little bit more, should have more weight to them, but Mark shakes his head, letting Jinyoung know that it’s okay. He can’t tell for sure what _exactly_ is okay though.

“Youngjae asked me to take care of a few things, since he’s moving out and all.” Jinyoung hurriedly clarifies, seeing Mark’s questioning stare, feeling like he has to have a solid excuse in order to return here.

However, this explanation only makes Mark even more confused. “He asked _me_ to do that.”

“He probably forgot. His memory wasn’t the greatest.”

“Probably.” Mark agrees. “He seems out of it lately.”

“You guys talk often?”

Mark nods, going through yet another box of stuff, still in search for something. “Yeah. That’s what friends do, they stay in touch.”

It feels like an insult targeted at Jinyoung, like an accusation told in the most casual and indifferent way; as if Mark would be bitter, as if Mark would be _still_ mad and Jinyoung doesn’t know how to feel about it. During those times when he imagined meeting Mark again – and god sees, it’s happened a lot more often than he’d like to admit – Jinyoung thought that he’ll be excited, his heart racing in anticipation if not for see seeing a person he kept loving throughout the years and all the fights, then at least for seeing one of his best friends.

But now they’re standing in the same room avoiding each other’s stares, feeling awkward and cold, like winter’s cold would’ve reached not only the streets, but their hearts as well. Time truly doesn’t heal some things – it makes them decay and disappear, and Jinyoung thinks that the memory of Mark Tuan he kept in his heart up until now is gone, too.

They aren’t the same people anymore, there’s nothing left out of the seventeen and eighteen year old Park Jinyoung and Mark Tuan – and maybe there doesn’t have to be anything left. That’s what life is about, it’s about a constant making and remaking of oneself. And maybe they could try to remake themselves now, at least by burying their old conflicts.

“What are you searching for?” Jinyoung asks a little awkwardly, completely ignoring the guy’s last comment and taking off his coat. Maybe can help out at least like that, if he truly isn’t supposed to be here due to Youngjae’s mistake.

“Nothing in particular.” Mark tells. His voice remains the same – a little tired and annoyed, but not angry. Not like he’d despise the idea of Jinyoung being so near him, and for a while it’s enough. “Just going through stuff. A little trip down the memory road, if you will.”

Jinyoung joins him, sitting down on the floor next to the boxes, not really caring about getting his suit pants dirty. The box they’re going through now has a lot of stuff they’ve accumulated throughout the years – some very weird cups Bambam brought them from one of his holidays in Thailand; a few books about photography that belonged to Jaebum, a few Christmas tree toys that were a little broken after that one time when Jaebum, terribly homesick, brought his cat over for a weekend during winter holidays.

Needless to say, the Christmas tree that year was demolished in a few hours, leaving shards of broken toys, Jackson complaining about his ruined masterpiece and Jaebum, unceremoniously thrown outside with the little beast in his arms, with a threat he won’t be allowed inside till the New Year.

_Good times._

There are a few other not so neatly packed things, and among them is an old photo album assembled by Jaebum, as he once used it as material for one of his assignments in university, too lazy to think of something original. And even though Jinyoung knows what’s in that album quite well, he still takes it to take a look and re-evaluate his memories.

The first photo he sees is of Yugyeom; he’s surrounded by a pile of books and concentrated on his homework unaware that someone’s taking a photo. Another photo is Jaebum and Mark brightly smiling at a camera in a beach – they went there during one of the spring breaks with their other friends, and Jinyoung remembers Jackson sulking about not being invited for three whole weeks. He sees himself, putting up with Jaebum’s requests to pose for a photo with Wonpil, sitting somewhere on rocks and looking at Han River.

Jinyoung broke up with Wonpil six days after the photo was taken.

It’s not simple photos that were used for an assignment from which Jaebum undoubtedly got an A+; it has stories coded into them, countless of stories frozen in time, and Jinyoung isn’t sure if he regrets those stories or not.

Especially the story he apparently has forgotten and which is reminded to him now by this one particular photo of him and Mark sleeping on the living room couch after some party, limbs tangled together and with Mark’s arm around him to prevent Jinyoung from falling out of the couch on the floor. It finally starts to make sense now, why Jackson was glaring at them for the rest of the day back then and why Bambam was making sarcastic remarks about it.

“I look tragic in that one, how much did we drink that night?” Mark says and Jinyoung flinches, having no idea that he is looking at the photos over Jinyoung’s shoulder. He says it somehow humorously, taking the photo album from Jinyoung and shuffling through the pages himself. Mark frowns at some photos, silently giggles at others before saying, “I had no idea half of these exist. It’s strange to see them now.”

“It is.” Jinyoung agrees, feeling a pang of anxiety kicking in. He shouldn’t be here, he should’ve turned around the same second Mark said that it’s him who had to help Youngjae take care of all the stuff, he shouldn’t have agreed to help in the first place, and he definitely shouldn’t be poking the memories he tried so hard to shove into the back of his mind. And yet, here he is, asking, “Do you… perhaps know how the others are doing?”

For a moment, Mark looks like he doesn’t want to respond, but Jinyoung’s question sounds genuine and not forced, so he says, “Well, Youngjae is moving to Daegu next week, as you probably know already.” Jinyoung doesn’t, he only knows the fact of moving, not the details. “Jaebum is working in an art gallery, he’s engaged. Bambam is in Thailand, helping out with family business. I don’t know much about Jackson though, it feels like we haven’t talked properly ever since we broke up, I only know he’s in China, or at least was living there a few months ago. Yugyeom… Yugyeom is okay too, he got released a year ago, heard he’s trying to finish high school, but he doesn’t really seem eager to talk to us, and we decided not to pressure him.”

“How do you know?” Jinyoung silently mumbles. “How come I have no idea about any of it.”

“I _ask_ , Jinyoung.” Mark bitterly smiles. “I actually give a shit about people, not pack my bags and run away from a sinking ship.”

So here it is, an open accusation finally thrown into the air.

Jinyoung wants to deny, to say that it’s not what happened, but it would be a lie. It _is_ what happened – he, unconsciously or not, did run away when they needed to stay as close as possible. He exchanged his friends into a few calm days and Jinyoung feels like this is one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

“It’s okay.” Mark continues and his voice is suddenly clear of bitterness and anger. “You fucked up, we all fucked up. Later, you just realize that some friendships just don’t last no matter how hard you try. It’s like you said back then – if it’s not meant to work out, then it just doesn’t.”

“Were you guys mad?”

“About what exactly?”

“About that time when I said I regret meeting all of you.”

Mark chuckles, but the sound of it is heavy and sad. “Actually, I was the only one mad. Jaebum was just moping around wallowing in despair and blaming himself for everything, and Youngjae told you probably had your own reasons. Jackson didn’t even believe you could say such a thing. But boy, was I mad about it. I truly hated you at that time. Seven or never, remember? I felt like you betrayed us.”

“I’m sorry.” Jinyoung says, probably for the second or third time that evening, and this time he really means it. Mark doesn’t respond to that, just sits down on the floor next to him. “I was just being stupid.”

“You were. We all were, I was too. If I wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t have dated Jackson.”

“You regret dating him?”

“We all have our regrets, Jinyoung. Okay, maybe I don’t regret that relationship in _that_ way, but I mean, it’s never a great idea to date your best friend. It’s rarely a fairytale with a happy ending, especially when it starts off when you’re only barely eighteen.”

Jinyoung thinks he knows what Mark is talking about, he often felt like that too; thinking that maybe none of this would’ve happened or that things would be at least a little bit different if he hadn’t fallen in love with Mark.

“If I wasn’t stupid, I would’ve done something about your feelings.” Mark adds, and Jinyoung’s heart makes a heavy somersault. “It was so, so obvious from the way you always looked at me. You always lacked subtlety in these things.” Suddenly he laughed, as if memories about it are warm and not painful at all. “We all knew about it, we probably realized it earlier than you did. But I started dating Jackson, so.”

“So?” Jinyoung sadly chuckles, a little weirded out knowing that everyone around him knew his secrets before he said them out loud and still pretended to be surprised when he mustered up the courage to open up. “It’s not like you would’ve dated me if Jackson wasn’t around. It’s stupid to date your best friend, remember?”

Mark shrugs. “You’re right, I probably still wouldn’t have dated you. Not because you were my best friend, I just genuinely wasn’t interested in you like that. Or maybe I wasn’t interested _because_ you were my best friend, I don’t know.” It hurts a little, Jinyoung has to admit, but he appreciates the honesty. “I guess, I felt a little uncomfortable about you feeling that way, so I tried to avoid it for the most part. I thought you got over all this when you started dating that guy, Wonpil. I thought I was genuinely happy about that, too.”

“But?”

“But I think I was just jealous.” Mark admits. “Of two things. Because you had a nice and loving relationship when mine was a fucking warzone and sinking like Titanic, and because… your attention wasn’t focused on me anymore. I guess I got too used to knowing that you have a crush on me, so a thought about you being able to love someone else was just _weird_.”

Now Jinyoung definitely knows what Mark is talking about – he knows the feeling so well, he’s felt the same so many times. It was so weird thinking he doesn’t have a crush on Mark Tuan that he always returned to those feelings whenever he got bored of his lovers.

“That’s a little… selfish.” Jinyoung tells and Mark doesn’t argue. “To be honest, I always found it weird that you somehow was always there whenever I was going through yet another break up. Sometimes I even thought that you was doing something for people to leave me, it was so weird.”

“It’s hard not to know when it was always written on your entire existence. I truly had nothing to do with your breakups, at least not literally.” Mark assures. “And people get a kick out of various dumb shit. Maybe I used to get a kick out of your breakups. Maybe after Jackson dumped me, I was so shaken, I subconsciously turned to people I knew had feelings for me.”

Jinyoung weakly smiles. That sounds like the most logical conclusion at the time and it lifts some weight that’s been crushing his heart for years. Now he knows where he stands with Mark, he knows what Mark feels to him, and that this conversation should’ve been held a couple of years ago.

“Want to decorate the Christmas tree?” Mark suddenly asks and Jinyoung turns to incredulously look at him.

“What?”

“Youngjae asked me to throw it away, but I say it’s a waste of a perfectly fine item. And besides, it’s Christmas soon, this place needs a breath of life before new tenants move in. Youngjae rented this place out for a young family.” Mark smiles and even though Jinyoung feels a little pang of sadness knowing that the place will never belong to them anymore, he still feels his heart getting warm.

“I hope this time we won’t need to search it like in some sort of a treasure hunt.” Jinyoung smiles back and Mark points at the corner of the room, the artificial tree packed into a long white box, waiting for them.

Years of separation didn’t make them forget their flawless teamwork it seems – the artificial branches are stubborn, not wanting to stay in a direction the two young men want them to, but they still somehow make it work, chattering and giggling like little kids.

Mark is still living in Seoul, Jinyoung learns, he’s working as a math teacher in one of the schools. Jinyoung thinks it’s quite suitable for him – Mark was always good at teaching, like, really _teaching_ , not helping to memorize stuff for a test and then forget it after. Besides, he always loved kids.

“You must be popular among all the girls in your classes.” Jinyoung notes, throwing the boxes upside down in search for more decorations.

“Not really, they think I’m boring. There this one other teacher though, she’s like fifty and always asks me out for dinner and I’m running out of excuses. She’s kind of creepy.” Mark scrunches his nose, jokingly trying to strangle Jinyoung with a piece of red tinsel when the latter starts singing love songs while imitating an old woman’s voice. “Shut up!”

For a second it seems like they’re teens again, teasing each other and laughing at the lamest jokes, until the Christmas tree is done and they stop bantering to look at the result of their work.

“I think it’s the best out of what I’ve ever seen in this apartment.” Jinyoung approvingly nods, searching for something to put on top of the tree. “Is the bird figurine still a thing to put on top of a Christmas tree?”

“Yeah, we never changed it, even when you moved out. The bird stayed.”

“I’m honored.” Jinyoung sheepishly smiles while Mark is shuffling through his phone to search for some Christmas music, because according to him, that’s the last and only accent they need as of now.

The Christmas songs Mark has in his phone are old and Jinyoung doesn’t even like them, but he starts moving to the rhythm of it nevertheless, finally feeling somehow festive. A short glimpse at a window, now without any curtains, says it’s snowing outside; another glimpse says that Mark is now standing in front of him with his hand reached out and it makes Jinyoung confused.

“Nothing like dancing to a poor quality Christmas music, am I right?” Mark laughs and Jinyoung wants to say he doesn’t dance and that it feels weird, because two hours ago he was absolutely sure Mark hates him – and god sees, Jinyoung wouldn’t even feel that he doesn’t deserve it – but Mark doesn’t care about excuses and apologies, dragging Jinyoung up on his feet.

Jinyoung hasn’t felt so stiff in a while feeling Mark’s body so close to his; the song is slow and Mark’s arms are placed around his waist. Mark is tiptoeing a bit, because he never grew those few centimeters to catch up with Jinyoung’s height; but at the same time, it’s not weird at all – they don’t need to be afraid of each other.

“Do you think,” Jinyoung suddenly gets an idea while Mark is resting his head on his shoulder, still moving to the rhythm of the song. “That Youngjae planned this all?”

Mark makes a pause before answering, but Jinyoung without looking at him can tell he’s smiling. “Now that you put it that way, I think he _definitely_ sent us both here on purpose. He’s been acting weird for the past couple of days.”

“Maybe he knew it won’t go to waste.” Jinyoung mumbles and Mark takes a step back, now looking right Jinyoung into the eyes.

The latter doesn’t know what to expect, thinking that maybe his words scared Mark off, but all the older guy asks is, “Do you still have a crush on me?”

Jinyoung thinks about it, trying to get his thoughts organized and not lost in the Christmas tunes that are still blasting from Mark’s phone. And eventually his answer comes with a firm headshake. “No, I don’t. Things have changed a lot, too much for me to still have a crush on you.”

Mark nods. “That’s what I thought.”

“What about you?” Jinyoung asks. “Do you still feel like you don’t see me that way?”

To his surprise, Mark shrugs. “I’m not sure. I think if I felt like this, I wouldn’t be this weirdly nervous now.”

Jinyoung smiles at his answer, feeling incredibly calm.

The fact that he doesn’t have a crush for Mark anymore doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel _anything_ – now that Jinyoung thinks about it, what he felt for Mark when he was a teen was a short-term obsession. Like a firework – explosive, emotional, a little blinding and deafening, but not supposed to last. What he feels now though, is something completely different.

It’s something way deeper, something that makes him understand that even if they ever will have a romantic relationship, it will never be perfect; something that makes him realize that he shouldn’t put tremendously high hopes into getting rid of their sharp edges and that it will always be like trying to stuff a square into a shape cut out for a circle.

And also something that makes Jinyoung think it’s _totally okay_ – it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try. It’s different from teen years where you think you should match with a person one hundred percent, Jinyoung thinks, it’s all about accepting the imperfections and trying to make them work, knowing that feelings have a tendency to shapeshift and eventually develop into something that’s meant to be.

And that’s more than enough for them both.

Their first kiss is messy – it’s awkward and they don’t know what they’re doing, and Mark is sure that Jinyoung tears up for some reason, but they’re still learning.

They’re learning to accept that everything is changing around them with every decision they make – friends become enemies, and then become friends again, and sometimes they become lovers. They’re learning to accept that all things are preprogrammed to change, and that keeping up with changes and accepting them, instead of standing in front of it and yelling to go away, is the best way to survive it. They’re also learning to accept that even if they don’t last for long or at all, it’s all okay, because they’re enjoying every second of it now.

Here’s a small fact Jinyoung happens to realize when he is seventeen: everyone changes. Everything, too.

And only when he’s twenty-six, Jinyoung realizes that it not necessarily means something bad.

Mark laughs, saying that now he’ll officially have a legit excuse to tell that old teacher at his school to stop asking him out, so that’s definitely not a bad thing.

**Author's Note:**

> lowkey dedicated to Avery and Sophie (you'll understand what it's about when you get my letter lmao), and to Anh - because of... everything? :)) (and the onion quote, i thought about it a lot, lol) 
> 
> anyway, hopefully yall liked this madness, comments and all the good stuff is always welcomed. i hope you all are healthy and fine, and happy upcoming holidays!! <3


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